Re: [tied] Etruscan and Nakh

In a message dated 13/03/01 19:21:19 GMT Standard Time,
glengordon01@... writes:

> I'm working on common sense and deduction. When the "Etruscans" were in
> Anatolia, they weren't "Etruscans". We can only call them such when they
> arrived in Italy. So there weren't any "Etruscans" in Anatolia.

Ok, 'Pre-Etruscans' then. Tyrrhenians if you want.

> An assumption, of course. One might want to pretend that everything that

is

> shared between Latin and Etruscan is the result of borrowing but when the
> entire evidence is weighed it becomes severely unlikely.

There is a whole layer of lexical material that is quite clearly composed of
recent borrowings, e.g. the names of vessels. Are you going to weight this in
your equation as evidence of a genetic relationship?

> >>You obviously don't have a clue what an ergative is used for and you
> >> >>don't have a clue about Etruscan. No one would be so daft as to
> >> >>propose such a thing for Etruscan /-s/.
> >
> >Beekes?
>
> My point exactly. I rest my case. You may as well say "Greenberg" for all

I

> care. Just because a lunatic proposes something doesn't mean it's true.

You're ad-homineming again. Beekes is a respected academic. (Ok, Greenberg is
too, but you get my point). I haven't actually read Beekes on Etruscan, but
the fact that both he and I have come up with the possibility (note:
POSSIBILITY) of /-s/ being an ergative independently of one another must say
something about the DATA. I have read some book he wrote on Indo-European (I
forget the title) and he didn't seem like a 'lunatic' to me at all. Maybe I
am missing something.

> >Sorry, there are THREE instances of /cn/ in the whole Etruscan corpus.

The

> >same number of instances as there are of /cnl/, in fact. Now why would
> >anybody want to stick another case ending on to a word which already had
> >an 'accusative' ending?
>
> Well, that depends on whether you look at the -n ending as an accusative

or

> as an oblique ending. The two cases are related anyways, of course.

What does /cnl/ mean then?

> >And how do you know that the handful of nouns with /-n/ added
> >aren't just alternative forms for /-ne/ or /-na/?
>
> No, that ending doesn't mark regular nouns. The most we can say is that

the

> accusative was marked for pronominals and demonstratives.

There are loads of proper names that have these endings.

> You're out on a giant limb here. You haven't fully outlined how
> this supposed contact has come to be, where and when, and you're relying

on

> Beeks (yixe!). I have no respect for ideas that just don't work from the
> beginning. There can never have been contact between Etruscan and Nakh,
> ever.

Ok, PRE-Etruscans, PRE-Nakh.

How: by being in the same place
Where: Eastern Anatolia
When: Prior to 1200 BC


Ed.